Gcse exam help

English Language Narrative mark scheme

The narrative is worth 40 marks. To get the top marks in your narrative (band 5), the exam board focus on two assessment objectives: 5 and 6. I'm not sure if it's just my school that use this or if it's across the country.
Ao5 (worth 24 marks) is to do with communication and organisation. Keywords and phrases the exam board use are 'coherent', 'controlled', 'ambitious vocabulary' and 'sophisticated'. This refers to the actual layout and vocabulary used in the narrative. Your plot may be perfect but if the language and layout aren't at a higher level, the plot will have no effect on the reader. The key things for ao5 can be achieved in a fairly simple way.
Checklist:
-avoid switching tenses (unless it's a flashback or a flash forward) eg. Instead of saying 'I swam further into the sea. As I am swimming I can see a fin emerging from the water', say 'as I swam further into the see, I noticed a fin emerge from the water'. It may seem simple to some but switching tenses can be done without you even realising.
-aim to use high level vocabulary. In the run up to exams, keep writing up your narrative and look for synonyms for simple words you use. Eg. Instead of saying 'a lot of' say 'a plethora of'. This is a quick and easy way to pick up extra marks as all you have to do is google '(insert word here) synonyms'. My English teacher says that you know you're using ambitious vocab when some words you use have 3-6 syllables. Obviously some words don't apply to that but it is definitely something to consider.
-As simple as it sounds, remember to use paragraphs. In the exam, you may panic and just try to write down everything from your narrative that you learn and in doing that, you may forget to use paragraphs. The simple fix to this is to write 'use paragraphs' on the top of your page (this also applies to other parts of English too).
-Try to show, not tell in terms of personality traits. Eg. Instead of saying 'I was anxious', say 'I tugged on the sleeves of my shirt' or something else that your character would do if they were nervous. (If you need help with this I'll make another part to this on how to create a character profile in the near future).

Ao6 is much simpler and worth 16 marks. It focuses on vocabulary, sentence structure, spelling and punctuation. It overlaps with ao5 in some respects. Keywords being 'controlled', 'accurate', 'correct', 'varied' and 'ambitious'. To avoid losing marks on this section, use words that you are 100% confident in spelling, even if that means using synonyms for some words. Also, avoid simple punctuation mistakes such as comma splicing or forgetting the odd quotation mark. Varied sentence structure is also key to getting top marks. Over-using short sentences always ruins the complexity of a plot and over-using complex sentences makes it easy to forget the plot but using all different types of sentences appropriately should keep the plot both complex and easy to follow.

The lower the band, the lower the expectations. For example band 5 asks for exceptional spelling whereas band 2 asks for some correct spelling.
To summarise, the exam board ask for a developed and well executed product in terms of spelling as well as layout which, with some work should be fairly simple to achieve.

Thanks for reading :)